RAW Developer

[Mark D Segal]

weeeelll...  If you take a look at my link, it is actually quite "constructive".  300MB worth, in that case.  Every new RAW Smart Object  is new data, rendered from that raw sensor file.  As Andrew Rodney once commented, "if you can stand the overhead..."  because every one you add also adds the total size of a new RAW file. 

Adobe and Apple, for that matter, do talk about the source file not being touched, etc as you say, but the layered RAW Smart Object workflow is also included in what they (Adobe only, in this case...) call non-destructive, along with the XMP stuff and even the DNG language. 

I know it's quibbling...  we need the judicious application of alcoholic berverages to continue this properly...  ha!
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OK, I like a good Merlot............

[teddillard]

OK, I like a good Merlot............
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  [attachment=8165:attachment]

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks Ted, nice shot - can just grab out and reach it.  

[teddillard]

Thanks Ted, nice shot - can just grab out and reach it. 
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thanks, just happened to have that lying around...  but then, you should always have a nice little merlot kicking around, right?

(canon g9, btw...  my "always with me" camera)

[Mark D Segal]

Absolutely.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Just tried out Raw Developer 1.8. Very impressed with the improvements not only with the highlight recovery feature but better color rendering with my Pentax K100D PEF's.

Another interesting feature is the Highlight menu on the Input panel that allows control of highlight neutrality that corrects for green/magenta color errors that pop up in scenes with off neutral color temps like clouds at sunset. With this handy tool ETTR is going to be a lot easier to deal with when shooting those types of scenes.

This has always been my favorite raw converter and now it's even better. The sharpening quality and image detail is over the top.

I think Brian should win some type of an award for his work on this wonderful app. And he really does get back to you when emailing.

Below is a sample comparison between RD 1.7.2 and 1.8 showing much improvement recovering highlights in clouds.

[attachment=8167:attachment]

[Tim Lookingbill]

And for those that wanted to see a comparison with ACR to this same file I've provided a sample below including edits to achieve the final results.

The only thing about ACR I don't like is its mandatory noise reduction and adjustable sharpening algorithm that makes detail like grass, pebbles and bark viewed at 200% look like they're made of clay. This would only be seen in poster size enlargements, though.

[attachment=8169:attachment]

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks Tim - two observations: (1) I don't see much difference between the RD1.8 and the ACR renderings. (2) If you were to do the same thing in ACR 4.x (or a downloaded demo version of Lightroom 2), it is possible that you would achieve substantial improvement over ACR 3.7 - it's a much enhanced application.

Mark

[Tim Lookingbill]

MarkDS,

I did try out ACR 4-4.5. I didn't see a substantial improvement in highlight recovery, sharpening and texture detail. In fact the clay like texture detail has been more amplified.

I'm pretty happy with the highlight recovery in all versions so I didn't see a need for improvement or take notice if any existed.

I did like all the new color tools of course.

The new DNG Profile Editor and its ability to manipulate color tables on an incredible level of precision is what I've been eyeballing it at the moment. As long as other third party raw converters are DNG 1.2 compliant they'll be able to render these type of color table edits as well.

Raw Developer's Brian Griffith indicated to me in an email he's looking into it since his app does read and process DNG raws already but only those with matrix edited embedded profiles I think. Not sure if there was a previous version of DNG PE that allowed matrix edits only since I just found out about the newer PE several weeks ago. I'm about six months into learning all the aspects of raw processing and I'm still learning.

Just to add something about Raw Developer's method of Highlight Recovery I just noticed and that is it allows edits to isolated areas of highlights without having to use the exposure slider like you do in ACR which can noticeably darken the entire image.

I just messed around with ACR 3.7 and beefed up the brightness to get back the darkened mids but now the highlight detail edit points on the curve have been shoved way too close to the 255 region where you can't place anymore edit points to get back this washed out detail.

Raw Developer allows multiple points practically touching each other as if you're working with the finest 50 band audio EQ in existence. But since I didn't use the expo slider in RD, my edits are further spread out along the curve with enough room away from the 255 region for finer tweaks and even more room if I use the Lightness curve instead of the RGB composite.

[Mark D Segal]

Normally, you don't need to use the Exposure slider in ACR to recover highlights. I guess much of this depends on exactly how one uses these applications, which is hard to drill down to on a Forum - a bit like picking up dimes with gloves on. RD 1.8 looks like a fine application from what you are showing. I'm going to be testing both sometime over the next week or two when I get access to a Mac. That way I'll have all my own tweaks (and errors) in one place!

[Tim Lookingbill]

Mark,

I was referring to Highlight Recovery in ACR 3.7. The only other option besides the exposure slider is the curve tool and I couldn't get any detail out of that cloud using curves alone.

I can't remember the tools used by ACR 4-4.5 for Highlight Recovery since my 30 day trial expired several weeks ago. There is so much to learn with Photoshop with each upgrade (like Smart Objects) that just trying to figure out all the tools in ACR is enough to keep me busy and dizzy with confusion. With the many options available I find it hard to know where to start a workflow plan.

Raw Developer has a much more simplified interface. You can use it as long as you like so you can take the time to see what each tool really does to a variety of images under different exposure parameters. I'm not a pro photographer. I'm looking into using a DSLR to reproduce fine art paintings printing onto wide format inkjet canvas rendering as much detail as I can. And Raw Developer delivers in this regard.

I mean when photographing a painting with multi-layers of tertiary colors in dark regions of shadow detail, digital capture be it a scanner or camera usually renders all these colors next to each other on the color wheel in monochrome. For instance deep greenish blue, next to dark Navy blue, next to cobalt in a layered applique will render as one blue with varying densities. Having Lab and separate RGB curves can bring out these color distinctions without affecting other areas of the image. The DNG Profile Editor would work even better.

[Mark D Segal]

Hi Tim,

The raw workflow has indeed become a fulsome subject of late. Gone are the days when one just moved a couple fo sliders, pushed a button and did all the heavy lifting in PS. If you want to pursue the ins and outs of raw processing with ACR/LR, the best resources are Jeff Schewe's Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and the video download which Michael and Jeff produced on Camera raw, downloadable on this website. Also their very recent video download on Lightroom 2 is excellent and covers much of the territory also applicable to the latest versions of ACR.

But if RD is meeting your particular requirements to your satisfaction, you're in good shape as it is.

[Mark D Segal]

BTW, I should add to this, boiled down to the bare essentials, the recommended workflow is top to bottom within each tab and left to right between the tabs.

[BernardLanguillier]

for longer exposures, do you use RD? or simply your D3?
stefan
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Correct, I use RD or Silkypix for ZD files.

Cheers,
Bernard

[BernardLanguillier]

Just to add something about Raw Developer's method of Highlight Recovery I just noticed and that is it allows edits to isolated areas of highlights without having to use the exposure slider like you do in ACR which can noticeably darken the entire image.
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I haven't tried 1.8 yet, but if this is confirmed, it would be a huge time saver for panoramic work since you would be able to paste a highlight recovery to several images without risking exposure variation between the frames...

Cheers,
Bernard

[Tim Lookingbill]

I haven't tried 1.8 yet, but if this is confirmed, it would be a huge time saver for panoramic work since you would be able to paste a highlight recovery to several images without risking exposure variation between the frames...

Cheers,
Bernard
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If your exposures are identical for each shot or your blowouts are somewhat equal it might work. I've never done panorama's.

The Highlight Recovery tapers off similar to the Highlight slider in the Adjust panel. I imagine it will depend on the amount of overexposure or ETTR.

I don't know what he did to change the custom ICC matrix profile creator but I can get very accurate looking hues and saturation levels playing around with the RGB and color temp nodes now. It now acts a little bit more like ACR's calibration slider tab.

I've been emailing Brian about this tool because the default color profile for my camera was quite a bit off with the majority of my images in RD 1.7.2. I was trying to come up with a better profile using this tool but color changes didn't make sense and weren't consistant with every node adjust. To get a correct looking cyan I had to tolerate reddish or over saturated skin. Now the newer profile looks even more accurate for the majority of my images but some show colors like magenta-ish pinks and skintone with a bit too much yellow. I can fix skintones easily without affecting other colors using this tool, but I can also do the same using the Lab a/b curves.

[Chris_Brown]

I'm loving the controls here, and I applaud the guys working so hard on this package... but I have the same issue with this, as with any other processor outside of Camera RAW. No Smart Object workflow.

But doesn't this require the use of ACR? What if one prefers the results from a different raw processor?

[Mark D Segal]

What if one prefers the results from a different raw processor?
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Life is full of compromises - you want a Smart Object - it's only so smart - it opens into ACR. I haven't heard that it can be opened into anything else. So it seems you have two choices: (a) a non-Adobe converter and no Smart Objects, or stick within the Adobe family and get Smart Objects.  

[Chris_Brown]

So it seems you have two choices: (a) a non-Adobe converter and no Smart Objects...

Which results in merely one additional file: the resulting 8- or 16-bit RGB "root" file from which to build a final, finished file. In hard-disk economic terms, that means allocating an additional 130MB for the root image file. In terms of Raw Developer's input parameter file, it's still only 4KB, so it's very cheap in terms of hard disk economics to use a non-Adobe raw processor.

An argument can be made that in order to change that root file, the raw file must be re-processed. This requires time, which is of great value to almost everyone (especially those buried under GBs of files). By using Smart Objects, time spent re-processing is minimal, but still existent. By not using Smart Objects, time spent is perhaps more, but this is variant upon the end user's level of experience.

However, Ted's example of using raw files within smart layers to create an HDR image is intriguing.

[Mark D Segal]

OK - file size and disk space - another variable to throw into the mix. Let's look at this logically in terms of priorities. Disk space is cheap, time is expensive. The smallest image file is the raw file. Those 4 or 5 KB files are metadata files. ACR and LR have them too; DNG embeds the information. These don't bloat disk space. If we can go from importing the image to print without Photoshop all in the raw converter as Lightroom is structured to do, the disk space is confined to the raw file size and perhaps an XMP of 5 KB.

If we need to work in Photoshop regardless of all the adjusting done in the raw converter, we render the image and then we store at least the size of the rendered image plus the raw file, regardless of which converter we used.

If we import the raw file as an S.O. into Photoshop, yes, the Photoshop file gets bigger, BUT we also have a universe of image adjustment flexibility through the whole processing pipeline without having to redo all the work in PS if we find at some point during the PS work, we should have made some further adjustments at the raw stage which would have been better. So we buy a larger file as an insurance policy for avoiding perhaps considerable wastage down the road. Maybe we draw on that insurance, maybe we don't. After processing the image, if we think we won't need the insurance, we can convert the SO to a Background layer and save as an ordinary PS file.

The bottom line here is that one suite of programs provides this flexibility and others don't. If we need or like the expanded range of options and their associated potential efficiency to work with, file size is not the main distinguishing issue or even the decisive one.